


怪談: A Ghost Story

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:41:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan's path is haunted.</p><p>But by what?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alchera

Chapter One

Autumn, 2183

Location: Omega Nebula/Amada System/The SSV Normandy in a slow cruise past ghost-haunted Anjea's gravity well en route to the ice pit of Alchera/Shepard's cabin, two bodies coming to rest.

~~

Shepard kissed his way down the side of Kaidan's throat, long and slow and messy, as the last of the orgasms rolled through them like a tide. 

The room was warm and dimly lit, scattered datapads on the desk casting a faint glow. Silent except for two men breathing hard and the soft song of the Normandy's drive core humming through her metal bones.

Kaidan dragged Shepard's face to meet his, worrying at his lower lip. "I have to say, Commander." He quirked a little smile into the kiss. "I've really enjoyed serving under you." 

Shepard made a small bark of a laugh and buried his face in the pillow. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you." One stormy blue eye peeked at Kaidan over the stiff white of the pillowcase, and he rubbed his cheek against Shepard's head.

"Never, ever." He said as they resettled themselves, Shepard fitting himself against Kaidan's side with a yawn. "Think they're finally going to give you your Captain's bars after this tour?" 

Shepard made a low sound, an almost-growl in harmony with the hum of the drive core. "Honestly? No." He shook his head against Kaidan's chest. "Despite everything, I haven't won many fans in Alliance Command. It's just easier to keep me... keep all of us... on the Normandy out here, chasing bullshit geth rumours than it is to let this bunch of troublemakers run around unsupervised." He sighed.

Kaidan stroked through the short scruff of Shepard's hair. "John.. We'll figure out how to get them to listen and..."

"No, it's ok." Shepard looked up at him, eyes bright in the gloom. "I still have the Normandy, I still have the crew. I still have *you*." He quirked an eyebrow as he ran his fingers along Kaidan's jaw. "And that's all I need right now, even if they still don't believe us about the Reapers." Shepard paused. "Hey, I've put in a request to give the crew a week's shore leave. I'm thinking of having Joker bring us somewhere warm."

"I like that idea." Kaidan laughed. "... are you inviting me on vacation, Commander?"

"I might be, LT." Shepard ducked his head against Kaidan's chest. He was saying something else, but the temperature suddenly dropped in the room, gooseflesh rising on Kaidan's skin. 

There was a thin, high sound. Almost like an owl's cry, raising the hair on the back of Kaidan's neck and Shepard didn't seem to notice. Sitting up, Kaidan saw a flash of movement, something white and tattered in the corner of his vision. And the cries grew louder and louder.

A woman... or the impression of one... and she was holding something. Battered black armour, a stripe down the arm. And there was blood, there was so much blood. And he knew whose armour it was, the chill like a frozen hand on his throat.

"SHEPARD!!" He gasped, and the room was warm and quiet and Shepard was holding him, eyes wide.

"Kaidan. What happened?" He asked, stroking Kaidan's face gently. "Hey.."

"I must have.." he blinked, leaning into Shepard's warmth. "...dozed off?"

"If I'm that dull, then you can pick our vacation plans next time." Shepard joked.

"John.. I..." The sudden lurch of the ship, claxons blaring across the speakers, cut off Kaidan's thoughts. 

Shepard was out of bed in a second. "We're under attack." He shouted. "Gear up, meet me in the CIC."

"On it." Kaidan nodded, the chill of the dream quickly fading in the red glare of the emergency lights.

~~

He took the precious seconds to armour up, even as the Normandy shook and screamed, burning up from the inside. The others had too, scrambling to get their hardsuits on before the ship broke up.

And out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a flicker of ghostly rags, fear like icy butterflies flitting through his guts.

He found Shepard yanking off a fire extinguisher, the tiny can ridiculous in the face of the hell boiling in the Normandy's corridors.

"Get the others to the rescue pods!" Shepard shouted at him, tossing Kaidan the extinguisher. "I'll go get Joker."

"I'm not leaving you." Kaidan grabbed his arm, and Shepard paused, closing his black-gloved over Kaidan's.

"Go. That's an order, LT." He said, gently moving Kaidan's hand. "I'm going to get Joker. The Alliance will come for us. Go."

"Aye, sir." Kaidan said, stepping back. "Don't be late." He added with a confidence he didn't feel, Shepard, giving him a jaunty little salute as he dove into the fire.

He didn't know what had happened until he heard Joker screaming in his suit comms.

The rest of the crew crammed into his lifeboat couldn't hear it, holding each other as the tiny pods lurched away from the dying ship, but he could, in his earpiece. Joker screaming Shepard's name, over and over.

He couldn't let them know. Not yet. Couldn't let them panic, and he knew Garrus, the others, would do the same.

And thankful for the helmet that covered his face, and the internal sound dampeners, Kaidan sobbed, a thin, high sound like the cry of an owl.


	2. HORIZON

Spring, 2185

Location:Shadow Sea/Iera System/Wind whistling through Horizon's tall grass as one desperately lonely man oversees the calibrations of weapons pointing up at nothing/The colonists ignore him. No one's even offered him a cup of coffee.

~~

He didn't tell them about the ghost, not once in the 35 separate debriefings and psych counselling sessions the Alliance put him and the others through after Alchera. Didn't tell them about the tattered woman holding Shepard's bloody armour in her weedy fingers.

Of course, he didn't tell them lots of things about that mission. Didn't tell them how his lips knew the taste of Shepard's cock, or his ears the shape of his name on Shepard's lips as he came. How his heart had memorised Shepard's lopsided smile when they'd discussed renting a flat on the Citadel, taking a leave, being normal. Didn't tell them how he heard Joker scream until he couldn't anymore. Didn't tell them he didn't take off his own hardsuit and helmet for hours after they'd been rescued because he couldn't stop crying.

But some things, they knew already.

The alliance shuffled Garrus and the other alien crewmembers back to their respective worlds without so much as a goodbye. They grounded Joker. Kaidan had got off lucky. A commendation from the Alliance for bravery of all things. An assignment under Anderson's command. 

It was a long time before he stopped thinking he saw Shepard out of the corner of his eye. And a longer time before he stopped thinking he saw *her*, waiting for the cold and the keening cry scrabbling up his spine.

The chill never did quite leave his bones, even if he never saw her again.

(She did her job.) Kaidan thought once. (the wailing woman come to mourn the death of a great man). She did her job, and he could move on, even if it never stopped hurting.

~~

The colonists resented him, hated the Alliance presence in their backyards. Hated *him* for some inexplicable, visceral reason that echoed the fact that Kaidan still hated himself to several degrees.

But colonies were disappearing. Whole worlds vanishing without a trace. And here he was in the tall grass, trying to figure out why the GARDIAN weapons were malfunctioning and why every other sensationalist extranet newsflash involved stories that Shepard was alive and traipsing around Omega or Illium.

Trying to figure out why Anderson had intel that said all of it was true. And it was because of Cerberus.

Kaidan wanted it to be true. Wanted it to be a lie. He was tired of ghosts.

He kicked the console with a curse, then shivered as the wind shifted, dark clouds rolling in. 

But the chill was wrong, prickling like crystals of ice in his blood, and Kaidan felt the cold hand of fear on his throat. White flickered out of the corner of his eye and he wheeled. "No, no. No! WHAT DO YOU WANT?" He shouted at the wispy thing flitting just outside his peripheral vision. "HE'S DEAD, GODDAMNIT."

A flash of dark hair amidst the white rags, and she pointed to the sky. 

The Collectors had come.

~~

It was not Kaidan's finest moment, paralysed by the poison, frozen helpless as the Collectors gathered their prizes.

And then there was lightning, the thunder of a sonic boom. A vanguard's war dance, and over the bullets and the explosions, the unearthly howls of the collectors as they died, he thought he heard his name being desperately called.

It was all over but for the shouting by the time the poison wore off, and he was face to face with a ghost of a different sort. Shepard, stormy eyes full of the pleading words he was too proud to say.

He felt like Shepard in the hug they held for too long. Smelled like him. And Kaidan hated Cerberus for it. Hated whatever they had done and hated himself for the anger that spilled out from the cracks in his heart that had never quite healed.

As he stalked away from ~~(the man, the beautiful heartbroken man, the man he never wanted to stop hugging)~~ the thing wearing Shepard's face, he saw her, a sliver of pale in shadows of the damaged GARDIAN tower. 

He thought he saw a smile on her faceless face.


	3. MARS

Autumn, 2185

Location: Local Cluster/Sol System/clouds of billowing rust choke the Martian horizon, while so close and so far, earth begins to burn./two bodies locked in uncomfortable orbit as they race against time.

Kaidan saw her, out of the corner of his eye, flickering in the dark as they chased Eva core through the killing field that had been the mars research station. He could feel the cold in his guts rising.

Could feel it as surely as he still felt the warmth of Shepard's hand when he'd helped him aboard the Normandy.

He forced himself to ignore her, ignore the implication that he might lose Shepard for a third time. Once due to joker's stubbornness, once due to his own. (Three strikes and you're out) the back of his head giggled in mild hysteria. A third time, Shepard might be lost for good, and the galaxy with him.

He didn't hesitate to go for the burning shuttle, knowing Shepard was right behind him. It was easy to fall into the routine again, knowing the commander was at his side, overriding the doubts.

He didn't even know what was happening until Eva core's hand was on his throat, and she was beating him into the side of the shuttle like a ragdoll. He could hear Shepard screaming his name over the suit alarm blaring in his ears, HUD flashing a string of alerts.

And then it wasn't Core's hand on his throat. It was the wailing woman. He saw a flash of features behind the tattered veils. Beautiful, dark hair rippling behind her.

Familiar, so, so familiar.

And her keening cry took form into words. "Why did it have to be you?" Ashley shouted in his face.

~~

It was the Normandy's medbay, he knew that, distantly. Damp cloth in trembling hands (hands that could crush a normal person's, hands that had lifted a tremendously heavy sniper rifle and wielded it like an assault rifle, hands that had traced every line in his skin a lifetime ago) wiped away the blood as if Kaidan were made of glass.

And she was there, sitting at his other side. The veils loosely draped around her shoulders, she sat in armour that looked like his -battered and blue.

"I wanted to live, Kaidan." She said, watching Shepard clean the blood, his face in torment. "I died because he loved you more."

(I'm sorry, ash.) he couldn't move, couldn't talk. His body was broken, his brain was swelling. (I never asked for John to save me.)

"I know, LT." She said, picking at the rags that floated around her. "I haven't been able to let go, I can't move on. And every passing year it gets harder. I can't escape you until you die too." 

(He's never forgotten you ash. I haven't either. I'm so, so, sorry.)

"I hate you and I don't want to,LT." She said sadly. "But I think, I think if I can get you to die, maybe I can move on. Go to heaven.. Or hell... Or anyplace that isn't watching you throw away the life I bought for you with my blood!" 

She spread her fingers out on his chestplate, stained with soot and blood. "I can feel your heart beating, Kaidan."

(I want to live, ash. I want to make things right.) it surprised him, but there it was. (I want to make things right with Shepard. I want to help stop the reapers. Protect my family and yours, ash. Please.) he pleaded.

"I prayed to god that I wouldn't have to die, Lt. That Shepard would find a way to do the impossible and save us both. But I was the distraction...it wasn't gonna happen." She growled. "But I pleaded anyways."

He felt Shepard's head rest on his chest, right where Ashley's ghostly fingers were, ice cold on his heart.

"We're gonna be at the citadel soon, k." Shepard said in a tiny, hoarse voice. "I don't care if you don't trust me, if you don't care, please, please just don't die. I can't..."

(ASH, PLEASE.) Kaidan begged. He shouldn't have been able to feel Shepard's heat through his hardsuit, but he could. (Don't do this to him. You want to haunt me until the end of time, go ahead, but don't do this to Shepard!)

Ashley pulled her hand away, examining her armoured fingers. "I'll make you a deal, LT."


	4. CITADEL

Autumn, 2185

Location: Widow nebula/the citadel/a lonely ghost stands vigil at docking bay D24

He can still taste her blood in his throat, like a sore he can't stop prodding with his tongue. Can still hear the endless loop of her prayers, begging to not be torn apart on Virmire.

But the deal is done, the choice, made.

A trade, to put Ashley's soul at rest, without shattering what was left of Shepard's heart.

He tries to remember the shape of Shepard's lips against his, tries to remember the taste of his skin over Ashley's blood filling his mouth.

She'll be up soon enough, walking in his battered skin. She promised, promised to watch over John, love him with every fibre in that broken body.

And Kaidan? All he can do is stand and watch, a Sentinel to the end.

He knows it won't be long until it's his time to take up the cry, hold Shepard's bloody armour in his hands, keening out the warnings that he knows Ashley will ignore.

And then, maybe it will be over. 

And just maybe, they can all move on, together.


End file.
